OStatic

We've written before about how, among large commercial open source companies, Red Hat's model of offering support and services for free software has proven to be a big winner. The company delivers quarter after quarter of outstanding earnings, and is building quite a large mountain of cash. At the upcoming Red Hat Summit, September 1st through 4th in Chicago, Cisco will be a major sponsor, and Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell will be on hand. As The Var Guy notes, for at least a few days ? at its own conference ? Red Hat will be seated at the center of the server universe. Meanwhile, Microsoft isn't ignoring the company, either.

Recently, we wrote about Dell's intent to bundle open source applications on computers for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The pre-configured SMB-in-a-box software bundles are targeted to make it easier for customers to become familiar with and use open source applications and platforms. As InfoWorld noted recently, though, Forrester and other market researchers have found that SMBs are apphrehensive about open source. Will Dell succeed with its strategy, and could it build support businesses around the offerings?